Arab Leader’s Shame and the Bloodbath at Ghouta (Syria)

The civil war in Syria continues with the civilian population besieged between multiple waring parties. It is reported that Assad is using chemical weapons, particularly in Gouta (which is a suburb of the capital in Damascus). I cannot speak to the veracity of these claims, but it does seem foolhardy to be dropping chemical weapons (that were supposedly all moved outside the country) on one’s own doorstep. Those claims aside, the fact that there is massive bombing and large scale civilian casualties seems indisputable. The situation across Syria is untenable and a rolling humanitarian crisis has become “normal.” That this situation has now prevailed for seven years is a body blow for anyone with the imagination to think what it is like to attempt to survive in Syria. It is no wonder that so many have fled the country, but millions still huddle under the guns and bombs trying to scrape out one more day of life. The setting of “humanitarian corridors” is at best a cruel joke, and at worst a way to draw civilians even further into the fire zone. This has to stop.

Are Arab-Muslim leaders waiting for the unknown and unthinkable catastrophic end to their own life and time in history rather than to stand up and make critical change? These leaders must inhabit a world of new political imagination to avoid the same ending as happened to the Romans. Would the estranged Arab leaders even acknowledge and address the cruelty ofcivilian bombardment, pains, destruction and sufferings that can be seen and the unseen!(Mahboob A. Khawaja, “Arab World at Crossroads: Leaders Waiting for the Unthinkable” 2015).

How Can We Bear to Witness the Man-Made Insanity of Civilian Massacres?

“Hell on Earth” – warnsthe UN Secretary General to the Security Council regarding the intensity of the humanitarian crisis in Ghouta. There are 400,000 civilians trapped under continuous bombardment by the Assad regime and Russian “intervention”. A UNICEF spokesperson spells out the tragic events:words cannot describe the humanitarian calamities and sufferings of the besieged people of Ghouta.

How can we bear to witness these atrocities? This is same question that millions of blood stained human beings were asking a year earlier in Aleppo. The Russian air attacks and Assad forces silenced the people of Aleppo with large scale bombardment and cold blooded massacres witnessed by the so called ‘civilized world’. History is repeating the cruel insanity – the cursed evil of egoistical power as happened to the people of Aleppo – the unstoppable insanity of the civil war continues unabated. Does global humanity have an awareness of the gravity of the humanitarian crisis, or a conscience to address it? Innocent children traumatized by the relentless day and night bombing cry for help, and call upon the international community to stop the bloodbath. Not so the UN Security Council which conveniently postponed its deliberations for days to see who will gain the upper hand while perpetual insanity and planned cruelty rains down on the helpless masses in Eastern Ghouta. What leads the UN Security Council toimagine that a cruel dictator will respond to the call of ceasefire in Ghouta and stop the daily carnage of civilian bombardments and killings? Did Hitler, Mussolini and George Bush ever listen to the calls of reason and honesty? Was the UNO Council NOT supposed to take urgent preventive action to safeguard the people from the scourge of the war? Despite the UN Security Council Resolution of Feb 24, 2018, consented to by all the actors, the increased bombing and killings of the civilian goes on relentlessly. Acceding to the compulsion of evil and the failure of moral and intellectual leadership have jeopardized the present and future of the Arab-Muslim world. Viewing the aggressive daily sectarian bloodbaths and militarization through a mental microscope, we see the outcome with a sense of unreality. Morally indifferent and intellectually exhausted, as incapacitated as they look, Arab and Muslim leaders are waiting and waiting, looking beyond the obvious as to what will happen next in Ghouta. They live completely disconnected from the affairs and challenges of the present world. On Twitter and Facebook (and elsewhere) innocent children are sending an SOS to the Global Humanity as if there is someone ready to come to rescue them from the bloodbath. It calls into question the conscience of the entirety of humanity. What are you waiting for when you get the SOS distress call from 400,000 human beings? It also calls into question the moral and political obligation of the neighboring Arab countries and their leaders who are nothing more than spectators. They maintain large armed forces, and volunteer forces, that could to have helped the entrenched people, yet they did nothing. They have exhibited indifference and complete disregard to global humanitarian principles and values that warrant urgent action to safeguard fellow human beings. What kind of role model of traditional Arab culture and civilization do you witness in these situations of extreme humanitarian crisis? An insane egoism has brought frightening trends in premeditated crimes against the humanity.

Even the UNO and the global political master appear to be aligned into a ‘No Action – Wait and See’ preference in this crisis. Condemnation will not help the masses under strain of a life and death situation. While Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron call on Putin to stop the bombardment, one wonders why the Arab leaders could not call on Trump and Putin to stop the bloody carnage in Ghouta. We witness the failure of the UNO in similar parables. Western military interventions and Arab authoritarianism have ruined the whole landscape of the Arab Middle East. The unspoken question of “How to reverse the anarchism of the few against many in a world being determined by the powerful nations at the UN Security Council?” The Arab rulers have absolutely no sense of time and history. Nor do they care for normal human values and political accountability to any international system of governance, be it the UN or the International Humanitarian Law dealing with war and conflicts and the protection of civilians in war zones. They are not open to listening and learning from the conscientious, learned, and wise.

The Arab and Muslim world is being completely subsumed into a quagmire of cruelty and madness. The leaders and the people appear to be on the same page of the bloodbath, but they breathe oxygen in separate time zones as the people are falling apart into the unknown. They believe in nothing; as if the Earth was dormant, as if there is no God and life ceases to have a noble purpose of peace, harmony and co-existence. Western war strategists are a crucial factor in bringing them to this perverted status-quo of moral and human equilibrium. In an advanced 21st century of knowledge, wisdom and information, man remains ignorant and arrogant of his wrong thinking.

Imagine if there was a Conscientious Global Humanity to Protect the Besieged Civilians in Ghouta!

Time and again, the entrapped civilians call upon the people of the earth to rescue them. They narrate horrific experiences of cruelty and 24/7 bombardment by the Assad regime and Russians. More than 500 civilians are reported to have been killed in just four days. Could it be the color, language and ethnicity of the Syrian people as not much known or popular with the Western industrialized civilizations? Could it be that their faith in Islam is a problematic and blocking factor for the emergency aid to stop the aggression? Imagine, if they were of the Anglo-Saxon ethnicity, would Russia have dared to annihilate them? Would the Americans and West Europeans not have rushed to help them or stop the cold blooded massacres at all sites of the human consciousness? Do all of these believe in God, Humanity, Justice and Purpose of Life and Accountability? Does the informed global community want to see the Arab world determine its own sadistic ending? Unjustifiably killing one innocent human being is like killing of the whole of the humanity. The global warlords represent a cruel mindset incapable of seeing the human side of living conscience. Perhaps, they view humanity as just numbers, not as living entities with social, moral, spiritual and intellectual values and hope for change and development. Every beginning has its end.

What Went Wrong in the Arab-Muslim World?

Once the Arabs were the pioneers of a knowledge-based sustainable civilization which lasted for 800 years in Al-Andalusia (Spain), the longest period in human history. Today, the former colonial thinkers and occupiers describe the Arabs and Muslims as “extremists”, ‘terrorists” and barbarians.” Throughout the 20th century and well into the 21st century, the oil rich nations failed to deal with emerging social, moral, intellectual and political problems. Instead they increased the militarization of the region, resulting in increasing bloodbaths depicting political havoc – floating without roots and reason. Islam enriched the Arabs to become the global leaders of a progressive civilization, but the oil enhanced prosperity transformed them into ‘camel jockeys’ and object of hollow laugher at after dinner jokes in Western culture. Money cannot buy wisdom, honor and human integrity.

All nineteen Arab states have strong military institutions and secretive police apparati trained and managed by the Western nations. All the military and police institutions are subservient to the authoritarian dictum. This is why both The US and Russia have blended their short and long term interests to be interventionists in the Arab Middle East. The ruptured socio-economic and institutional infrastructures will offer an open invitation to foreign intervention as there will be no challenge rising out of the chaos to be taken-over by the foreign masters. Such an outcome will open new markets for the US-Russian which are fast becoming war-run economies.

Do the authoritarian Arab leaders not know the end-game and destiny of all the monsters of history, such as what happened to Hitler, Mussolini, Saddam, Mubarak, Ghaddafi, and so many others like Assad in waiting? If they have a sense of the prevaling reality, would they not opt for a navigational change to safeguard the people and their own future? Tyranny is corruption and the masses are against this tyranny of governance, be it in Syria or across the rest of the Arabian Peninsula. All dictators enjoin an erotic ambition to rule and remain in power even if they have to dehumanize the entire population. The resulting degeneration and destructiveness has gone on for seven years in Syria. This aggressive action should have been challenged and stopped -even by force if not by reason – by other affluent Arab leaders and countries of the region. Alas, their conscience feels no sense of guilt for the on-going crimes against humanity. Time and history are not on the side of tyrant Arab rulers – soon they will be floating like scum on the torrent of time.

Violence and hatred are fast sinking the large landscape of Arab-Muslim societies into the abyss of irreversible deaths and destruction.Daily death statistics generate a media-frenzy supporting Samuel Huntington’s (“The Clash of Civilizations”, Foreign Affairs, 1993), claim of “Islam has bloody borders.”

The contemporary Arab societies are caught in a delusional, oil-generated, economic prosperity and they are overburdened by the ignorance and stupidity of the uneducated ruling elite; they are unable to see the light out of the box. Arab authoritarianism needs a strong jolt – a powerful political, intellectual and military challenge to avert the on-going military assaults against the very people on whose lifeline the nation state was created.

The voices of reason are loud and clear as global humanity cannot suffer the penalties of tyranny and the evil-mongering of the few dictators. We the people of the worldenjoin focused minds and imagination to articulate a new world of One Humanity, brotherhood and peaceful co-existence amongst all, free of hatred, intrigues tyranny, encroachment and animosity.

We, the people of the globe have an enriched understanding– how to change the egoistic and embittered insanity of the few hate-mongers and warlords into equilibrium of balanced relationship between Man, Life and God- given living Universe in which we reside all.

Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in global security, peace and conflict resolution with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including: Global Peace and Conflict Management: Man and Humanity in Search of New Thinking. Lambert Publishing Germany, May 2012. His forthcoming book is entitled: One Humanity and The Remaking of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution

By Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD. [Photo courtesy Human Rights Watch.] “Muslims are numerous but powerless. Divisions among Muslims, especially between Sunni and Shiites, have consigned the Muslim Middle East to almost a century of Western control….Muslim disunity has made it possible for Israel to dispossess the Palestinians, for the U.S.

Bin Laden killing: official report criticises Pakistan and US

Leaked report into killing of al-Qaida chief criticises both Pakistan and US, which it says ‘acted like a criminal thug’

Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad: the report repeatedly returns to the remarkable failure of the police, army and civilian authorities to investigate the unusual house where the al-Qaida chief hid for so long. Photograph: Anjum Naveed/AP

Pakistan failed to detect Osama bin Laden during the six years he hid in Abbottabad because of the “collective incompetence and negligence” of the country’s intelligence and security forces, the official report into the killing of the al-Qaida chief in 2011 has concluded.

The much anticipated report, a copy of which was obtained by al-Jazeera, is withering in its criticism of Pakistan’s dysfunctional institutions, which were unable to find the world’s most wanted man during his long stay in a major Pakistani city.

“It is a glaring testimony to the collective incompetence and negligence, at the very least, of the security and intelligence community in the Abbottabad area,” said the report, which criticised Pakistan’s military spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI), for having prematurely “closed the book” on Bin Laden in 2005.

Nor does the 336-page document rule out the possibility of involvement by rogue Pakistani intelligence officers, who have been accused of deliberately shielding Bin Laden by some commentators.

“Given the length of stay and the changes of residence of [Bin Laden] and his family in Pakistan … the possibility of some such direct or indirect and “plausibly deniable” support cannot be ruled out, at least, at some level outside formal structures of the intelligence establishment.”

It warns that the influence of radical Islamists inside the armed forces had been “underestimated by senior military officials whom the commission met”.

The document also gives a fascinating glimpse into the day-to-day life of Bin Laden: according to an account given to the Abbottabad Commission by his wives, he wore a wide-brimmed cowboy hat to avoid detection from spy satellites above, liked to have an apple and a bit of chocolate to perk himself up when he was feeling weak, and encouraged his grandchildren to compete over who could tend the best vegetable patch.

The children of one of Bin Laden’s trusted Pakistani couriers knew him as “Miskeen Kaka”, or “poor uncle” – after one asked why the tall Arab never went out on shopping expeditions, the child was told he was too poor to buy anything.

The document also reveals the tantalising moment when the car bin Laden was riding in was stopped by police in the picturesque region of Swat. The policeman was not quick-witted enough to spot the then clean shaven bin Laden and the group were allowed to pass.

In addition to its scorching criticism of Pakistani institutions, the document reflects official fury at the behaviour of the US. It concludes the US “acted like a criminal thug” when it sent the special forces raiding party into Pakistani territory.

It says that the incident was a “national tragedy” because of the “illegal manner in which [Bin Laden] was killed along with three Pakistani citizens”.

It says the operation on 2 May 2011 was an “American act of war against Pakistan” which illustrated the US’s “contemptuous disregard of Pakistan’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity in the arrogant certainty of its unmatched military might”.

Begun soon after the dramatic US raid, the judge-led inquiry by the Abbottabad commission heard testimony from some of the country’s most important players, including the ISI chief, Ahmad Shuja Pasha, who shared much of the authors’ despair about Pakistan, warning that it is a “failing state”.

With frank discussion of some of the country’s most sensitive issues, there were real fears it would never be published.

In remarks that will be seized on by critics of the CIA’s use of drone strikes against suspected militants inside Pakistan, Pasha admitted to a “political understanding” on the issue between Islamabad and the US – something Pakistan has always officially denied.

Pasha said there were no written agreements, and that Pakistan did subsequently attempt to stop drone attacks, but added that “it was easier to say no to them at the beginning”.

The former spy chief was scathing about the quality of Pakistan’s civilian leadership, accusing his nominal boss, the defence minister, of failing to have read “the basic documents concerning defence policy”. “There was simply no culture of reading among the political leadership,” and “the thinking process was also non-existent”.

The report also contains much criticism of the US, in particular the CIA for its failure to share intelligence fully with the ISI.

At one point, the CIA gave Pakistan phone numbers to monitor that would ultimately help identify Bin Laden’s personal courier – the all-important lead that eventually brought the manhunt to the al-Qaida chief’s Abbottabad home. The CIA never explained the significance of the phone numbers and the ISI failed to properly monitor them, the report said.

But in a striking echo of US unwillingness to share intelligence with its Pakistani partners, Pasha also said the ISI was reluctant to work with Pakistan’s own law enforcement organisations because “there were too many instances where information shared with the police had been compromised”.

His evidence highlights the ISI’s distrust of and anger at the CIA, which Pasha claimed deliberately prevented Pakistan from claiming the glory for finding Bin Laden, which he said would have improved Pakistan’s international reputation.

The “main agenda of the CIA was to have the ISI declared a terrorist organisation”, he is quoted as saying.

Pasha reports the words of a US spy: “You are so cheap … we can buy you with a visa, with a visit to the US, even with a dinner … we can buy anyone.”

The report asks whether the ISI had been compromised by CIA spies. One lieutenant colonel who “disappeared” with his family the day after the Abbottabad raid had a profile that “matched that of a likely CIA recruit”.

The document repeatedly returns to what it describes as “government implosion syndrome” to explain the failure of any institution to investigate Bin Laden’s unusual hideout.

“How the entire neighbourhood, local officials, police and security and intelligence officials all missed the size, the strange shape, the barbed wire, the lack of cars and visitors … over a period of nearly six years beggars belief,” it says.

It notes that the house was even declared uninhabited in an official survey of the area, even though 26 people were living there at the time.

It says Bin Laden must have required a support network “that could not possibly have been confined to the two Pashtun brothers who worked as his couriers, security guards and general factotums”.

The report says: “Over a period of time an effective intelligence agency should have been able to contact, infiltrate or co-opt them and to develop a whole caseload of information. Apparently, this was not the case.”

It also expresses shock that the US helicopters carrying members of Navy Seal team six were not spotted as they swooped in over Abbottabad on 2 May. A lack of operational radar meant the Pakistani air force only became aware of the attack from media reports after it was over.